Inhale
by we were here
Summary: If it's not one, then it's the other. And God knows you've never been good at multi-tasking.
1. Dust

**Disclaimer-**

SE Hinton owns The Outsiders. Lyrics are from "Closer" by Kings Of Leon.

**Author's Note-**

Tim, Tim, and, well, more Tim Shepard. Inspiration struck when I was running around the house this morning at 7 looking for my ID. Found it in the candy dish—that deserves a hohoho (holiday spirit for the win!). Final Exams are approaching (next Monday and Tuesday), so that means I've barely gotten any sleep this past week. Unfortunately, I still can't understand why I get writer's block for one fic in a_ totally_ different fandom, but am able to outline this document in one night? What the hell…

Anywhoos, a.) if you feel like reviewing this crapload of Tim Shepard told in a nostalgic 2nd person POV, then go for it; or b.) if you read this and manage to stomach the whole thing in one sitting, then I guess that's okay, too. For the life of me, I couldn't find the energy to separate this document so it's just going to stay as it is until I feel like writing more shit Tim-centric. Enjoy the sucky-ness. :]

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Open up your eye / I'll bleed you dry

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**i.**

All you can see is dust.

It hangs around the clammy, mid-summer air, so thick you think you might choke if you weren't already trying to breathe. Fingers wind themselves around her wrist like a snake suffocating its prey and you tug your little sister backwards, harsh-enough to watch her collapse to the dry grass that makes up the front yard. Blue sky, white clouds, and a yellow, burning sun the color of egg yolks swirl above you like you're trapped in some trippy kaleidoscope and can't get out.

Curly dangles off the front porch, skin blotched with little red spots he only gets before he starts to cry, face contorted into a mixture of anger and sadness. He's just sitting there, a lump on a log, clenching and unclenching his fists looking as though he can't decide whether to charge out into the middle of the yard or just stay where he is.

For once, you don't blame him. If you were in his place, you wouldn't know what the hell to do, either, but since you're oldest—the man of the house as of two-and-a-half minutes ago—you just turn to him and say,

"Go get her some ice er somethin', wouldja?"

He nods, silent, and within seconds he's disappeared back into the house, the screen door slamming behind him with a loud _clang_ that drowns out Angela's dry heaves. She's only six, you think, plopping down on a knee to examine the mark Dad's left behind on her cheek. It's not fair.

Then again, this shit's happened so many times before—with Ma's secret lovers—Vodka and Whiskey—and Dipshit Dad's narcissism—that you're not surprised he waited this long to walk out. But to slap your sobbing six-year-old sister on the cheek 'cuz she doesn't understand what the hell Dad's doing with all the family suitcases? That's just un-fucking-called for.

You snarl under your breath, tongue darting between your lips to lick at the dry skin. Tears make their way down Angela's cheeks as they dribble down to the Earth's surface in a messy, hazardous pattern, coloring the dirt beneath the both of you a muddy brown. A tear lands on your thumb as you tilt her chin up towards the sky so you can get a better look at the damage the bastard's left behind, the sunlight too bright on a day like this, too glaring, too _real_—and your face scrunches up at the pathetic sight.

You swear again, this time a little louder.

Angel's bottom lip wobbles. "I—"

"Don't apologize."

A few minutes later Curly's returned with the ice and he places it into your palm, and then shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. You mutter a few words that sound like "thanks" but aren't really, just empty words to fill an empty space that you swear to God you can feel growing wider and wider, expanding.

She shivers when you press the ice cubes to her cheek, and for awhile you just sit there, coddling your little sister in the middle of the front yard, letting the ice cool the raging fire burning beneath her skin while your brother stands behind you, awkward-looking and out of place. This is so messed up…

Beads of sweat are beginning to trickle down your forehead it's so hot out here, the sunlight's rays mixing with the sky and clouds to melt into a weird mixture of pretty-looking vomit, dust so dry, so _heavy_ it burns your scorched throat.

You smile then, so wide and forced that you can see your reflection in her dark eyes, feel the sun fry your molars to itty, bitty grains of enamel.

"Dad won't hurt you no more, Ang."

(You let her believe you anyway.)

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ii.

The only present you get for your thirteenth birthday is the news that your mother's estranged brother, Allen—the person you'd been named after, who lives off cigars and Italian food and smells like mothballs whenever he rarely visits—has gone ahead and kicked over the bucket at a whopping fifty-three-years-old.

Happy Birthday.

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a.

Later that night, you feel kinda sick as you light up a cigarette outside, watching red embers fall from the tip of the Marlboro to the ground. Inhale, and then you're back to thinking about stupid things that only stupid people think about 'cuz you're so smart.

You take a long drag and wonder if Uncle Al will be cremated or not. Maybe he's already in a holy bowl; shoved into one of those fire chambers they put the bodies in during the Holocaust. Or maybe he's still in the morgue, a lifeless soul rotting away on a metal table covered by a white blanket. And _if_ they bury him, will Aunt Catherine allow a lit cigar to be put in his mouth, just to create controversy, Italian take-out menus clasped in his hands instead of a rosary, and mothballs galore? That'd be a hell of a funeral you'd ever been to.

Exhale.

Smoke curls around your head.

The rest of the cigarette falls from your fingers, floats into a little crack in the dirt. Barefooted, you stomp it out with your heel, ignoring the fire of pain that shoots up your ankle, and head back inside. You decide to celebrate this special occasion by drinking the whole liquor cabinet in a couple of hours.

You come to one conclusion that night: embers look like fucking ashes.

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iii.

You learn three things your freshman year of high school.

One, the classes are fucking hard so you have to listen to the teacher sometimes or else they're gonna kick your ass out, and ultimately, you're gonna fail. Two, the way your dick itches when a cute broad with tits and a tight little ass walks past you is kinda common, so just ask to go to the washroom and alleviate the pain there, duh. And three, the people you think you're friends with may not be your real friends at all—no shit, Sherlock.

You have to snort at the last one 'cuz you think it's kinda ironic that you have a lot more enemies than friends. (Doesn't everyone?)

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b.

Sophomore year rolls around and you return back to Will Rodgers not on the first, but the _second_ day of first term—every good hood knows that when returning back to a certain location, you're supposed to arrive fashionably late—to find out that your homeroom teacher is engaged, which immediately promotes her to being a bitch or somethin'; fellow grease Darry Curtis made the football team, _again_; and that you failed Ms. O'Donald's first period Algebra, so that means you have to repeat the course. Whoopee.

You skip the rest of the week and hang out with Dallas instead. You can't stand him half the time, and you're pretty sure the asshole can't stand you that much, either, but he's a good source of entertainment when you need some. Case in point: the two of you are sitting in a booth at the back corner of The Dingo around noon, sipping Cokes when he asks, "Why are you in school, anyway?"

You flick a ketchup-lathered fry at him. To tell the truth, you really _don't _know how you've coped with seeing the same people for nine years straight, five days a week for several hours. It's _boring._

"'Cuz I don't wanna be a fuckin' dipshit like you," you finally say.

Dallas scowls, his blue eyes like electric daggers. He needs a haircut; his hair hangs in front of his eyes, the colors such a fair blonde it looks white. "Watch it, Timothy."

"Of course." The grin that crosses your face is anything but humorous.

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c.

In a nutshell, Homecoming Junior year is fucking _awesome_.

By half-time your pupils are already dilated. Will Rodgers' Sooners are up by a touchdown, and somewhere, amongst the sea of bodies flooding the bleachers, you find yourself shoved between Steve Randle and Davie Adams. The bottle of whiskey Davie'd smuggled is now almost empty, the alcohol burning your throat as it mixes with the nicotine you'd just inhaled.

The announcer's voice booms out of the stadium box, sending little zips of energy racing down your spine. Quarterback Darry Curtis is hanging off the field along with the rest of the team, watching his girlfriend—blonde-haired-blue-eyed Lori Michaels—do her little routine of complex cartwheels and spins in the air.

Vision blurry, you can barely make out the lights flashing across the black sky—stars, leaning in but pulling away at the same time—such a bright white it's almost paralyzing. Speech slurred, you try to explain this conceptual concept to Davie, who looks at you like you're fucking insane and shakes his head. Maybe you are; people say and do stupid shit when they're wacked. Hell, you're a pretty good example of a mistake.

You tell Davie to go shove a stick up his ass, nod a goodbye to Steve and then head off to find your brother, only to wind up fucking some nameless broad in the bathroom so hard that you're pretty sure you never pulled out and left your dick inside her by the time you stagger home at around three in the morning.

Kids just ain't your thing.

**..**

You wake up at one in the afternoon to find out that you vomited all over yourself_ and_ the bed, a skull-splitting headache starting as soon as you open your eyes.

Curly walks in to make sure you're breathing—his fifth check-up on you that day—and he bashfully mutters to you that, apparently, he heard from someone who heard from someone else who heard that Davie laced his concoction with a little something called LSD.

You tell Curly that you're going to fucking kill Davie Adams. He says, with a wolfish grin, that he already has.

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d.

Senior year goes by in a blur.

You turn eighteen and Ma decides to celebrate by remarrying some fucker named Donny. From the few times you've been home at the same time _he's _been home, dear Lord, you quickly figure out that he likes to drink beer, get into fights with bartenders—which ends up getting him kicked out of said establishment—and throw things at you, preferably Ma's invaluable glass china set.

Meanwhile, Curly gets to third base with a broad—almost there, almost—and Angela blurts out to you late one night that she kissed Charlie O'Brien behind the bleachers after school when no one else was looking "and is that okay, Tim?"

Half-listening, you glance up from your English homework spread out on the kitchen table and simply warn, "Don't let him touch you."

Angela beams and gives you a peck on the cheek. For a second you're completely shocked, catapulted back into the one memory almost six years ago—an eternity ago—but then it melts away almost instantly when she squeals in your ear, "I like you more than Curly."

You want to tell her she's wrong, so, so _wrong_. You want to tell her that she should like Curly more than you, that you're a fucking bastard, that you can't keep your own family together even if you die trying, but somehow, you can't find the words to form the sentences you want to say.

So you mutter, "Thanks", as nonchalantly as you can and shoo her off upstairs. Tell her you'll talk to her in the morning.

(You can't sleep for three days.)

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iv.

On May 12th, 1960, you graduate from Will Rodgers High School with a GPA of 2.7.

Dallas was right; you're a fucking dumb ass. But, at least, you tell him one night when you're hanging out down by the quarry around midnight in early June—getting drunk out of your skulls—that you have a diploma to prove it. Mist is rolling up from the bank, the only light coming from the cigarette you'd just stuck between your teeth.

Dallas shoves you off the hood of your car, and suddenly, you're sinking into a pile of mud. Or, rather, the mud is sinking into _you,_ your clothes, seeping through every pore, veins squishing little pebbles. He leans over you, re-enforces the point that he'd been right all along—which he _had _been, really—and how dare you insult his intelligence. He spits a Loogie into the darkness.

You laugh for the first time in months. This time, his spit lands on your cheek.

(But Dallas doesn't need to know that.)

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e.

That summer, you can only watch in amazement as Curly grows like a bean stalk, higher and higher until _he's_ the one looking down at you, not the other way around. Each morning he seems to tower over you in the kitchen, your five-foot-eleven-inch frame looking tiny against his six-foot-three build.

Shoulders broaden so wide he could block the whole doorway with just his shoulder blades; voice drops about twelve octaves lower; and the baby fat melts off his face, drawing in high cheekbones and a pouty mouth. He's cut his hair so it's not as long anymore, doesn't hang over his forehead like it used to.

What's more unnerving is that he looks a lot like you, too, and can even pull off the infamous Tim Shepard Smirk once in awhile, 'cept you don't walk around fucking grinning like you own the damn place. And, well, fuck, he's only fourteen, and he's probably laid more girls than you have in the past week.

You pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a long sip, letting the caffeine burn your esophagus. You lean against the counter, exhausted. It's a Tuesday in July, around seven thirty in the morning, and little beams of sunlight slip in through the broken blinds. Curly's leaning over his bowl of cereal at the kitchen table.

Scratching the back of your head, you pucker your lips, unsure how else to broach the less-than uncomfortable subject of The Birds and The Bees besides a simple "how many people have you fucked, Curly?" questionnaire. Shit, it's about time he learned about this stuff, right? That's what Dads are for, anyway, to make the tough decisions and lay down the laws; not _brothers_—if you could even call yourself one.

You clear your throat. "Curly." _How many people have you fucked?_

He drops the spoon into the bowl at the sound of your voice, milk splattering across his shirt and the tabletop. "Yeah?" his voice cracks at the end. Oh, God, now you've freaked him out. Way to go, Tim.

"How many…"—you pause—"how many people have you, uh, slept with?"

Curly gives you an incredulous Look that's probably crossed your face more times than his. "The hell...?"

"How many girls have you slept with, Curly?" You ask again, let your voice drop an octave lower to let him know that he's not the one in charge. He shrinks into his seat, if only a centimeter lower, but you can see it: the spark of fear in his eyes, a little color rising to his cheeks.

"No one."

"That's bullshit."

"I ain't lyin', Tim!" he whines, the fourteen-year-old-bitch-assed Curly returning back to normal.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

You almost smile. "Good."

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v.

Tonight, the moon hangs low against the charcoal backdrop of the sky, and the air is full of humidity, raindrops beginning to trickle down the windowpanes.

You walk into the bathroom to take a piss, only to find Curly sitting on the edge of the bath tub, a washcloth pressed to his chin. His left eye is swollen shut, purple-blue reflecting beneath florescent lighting; white material of his tee-shirt dyed red. Curly doesn't even look at you, just opens his mouth and sneers, "Ma's fuckin' crazy."

Within seconds you've yanked him up a few good inches by the collar, pressed him between you and the tile wall. He gasps in pain to muffle a loud wail. Kicks at your knees, tells you to put him down, groans when you tighten your grip. Hastily spits out to you that Donny did it, that Donny thought he was you and fucking threw a bottle...

He ain't a kid anymore—hell, you've fuckin' known that since he began looking at your _Playboys_ about two years ago and almost lit himself on fire trying to light up a smoke—but it still bugs you something goddamned awful.

It grinds against every fiber in your body, makes the hot water sputtering down on you when you're lucky enough to wash up feel like a thousand knives tearing you to pieces, hollowing you from the inside out until all that's left is black blood and clogged arteries and squirmy guts. It makes stomach acid crawl up your throat each time you have to stare at yourself in a mirror, knowing that the person staring back is an always constant reminder of how fucked up you actually are.

Really, it is just another thing to think about, another thing to worry about, and another thing to _fucking care about_. 'Cuz if no one else says it, you'll start to believe that he's right, too.

"Shut the fuck up, Curly."

You uncurl your fingers from his shirt and let go, inhale; turn your head away, towards the sink, towards the mirror, towards the door, exhale; hear his body crash to the tile floor, inhale; he's choking on blood and saliva and unshed tears, exhale;

(Maybe that's what scares you the most.)

inhale.


	2. Open Wound

**Curly**

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Drip,

drip,

d

r

i

p

.

Your blood is on his shirt, his hands, the bathroom walls, and now the floor, a messy stream of red seeping in between the cracks in the tile and the holes in your bottom lip—you'd been gnawing so much lately, you're surprised your teeth haven't already disintegrated into chunks of enamel.

You're sitting on the edge of the toilet seat, watching him through one eye, the other one glued shut by popped blood vessels and eyelashes. You can barely see the tips of his dirty stocking-feet pace back and forth across the eight-by-five-space. He snarls something at you (where you supposed to be listening?) and curses.

Cabinet after cabinet is opened, rummaged through, slammed shut.

Bang.

He must have found the things he needed—sometimes, you think he's more disorganized than you are—'cuz his voice just becomes a low murmur that is barely heard over the loud ringing in your ears. He turns around, his face suddenly _right there_ in front of yours, and holy shit could you pass as his twin.

This makes you titter.

He scowls, the skin around his eyes instantly tightening, mouth forming into a cross between a frown and a sneer. When your teeth sink into your tongue, more blood begins to dribble down your chin. It's a constant process to keep from saying somethin' stupid—your whole body is still smarting from when he tossed you up against the wall moments earlier. (Don't want that happening again; it hurt enough the first time.)

"Curly."

You don't answer the first time. E'ryone knows that pretending is better than believing, anyway.

"Curly?"

"Yup."

A bottle cap falls onto your toe, bounces off into the corner. He swears again, louder this time—_fuck_—and shakes his head, pouring some type of clear liquid onto a washcloth. The potent scent of antiseptic lights your nostrils on fire, eye watering. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, in, out, in, out—

"_Ow!"_

He jerks his hand away, sighing, "What the hell did I do _now_?"

"You fuckin' lit my chin on fire, Tim!"

"I'm just tryin' to get all the glass outta your face, shithead. Cool off." He takes a breath, sits back on his heels. Underneath the upstairs bathroom lighting, his skin radiates off a pasty green color, almost like he's sick or tired—his soul too old for his body. For a brief second, you wonder if you're staring at your own reflection: defeated at every battle so far, but still holding on for the war yet to be fought, hope so close yet a thousand miles away.

"Oh." (What else is there to say?)

He mutters something incomprehensible and gets back to work, his fingers and the washcloth darting in and out from your view every few seconds. By the time he's done, a pile of red-stained glass sits in the sink. (You don't ask him how many band-aids he stuck on your chin—there are at least three empty boxes lined up by the bathtub.)

"I'll take you in the mornin' to get stitches."

You nod and stand up for the first time in about two hours, a little shaky on your feet as all the blood in your head rushes down to your toes. You stumble out into the hall while he lags a few paces behind. Already, you can hear a nasty argument brewing from the kitchen downstairs, low voices—Donny, Ma, Donny, Ma, then Donny again—bouncing off the walls.

There are thirteen steps leading down to the ground level. Figuring you've got about forty-five seconds to make it to the basement, not counting how long it'll take to sprint down another flight of stairs, you're only the fourth step—forty-one-point-eight seconds left—when his hand comes crashing down on your shoulder.

"Don't."

You look up at him from your spot on the staircase. Instead of you towering over him it's the complete opposite, and suddenly, your height doesn't really matter—you're just another ant waiting to be squashed on.

He's leaning against the wall with one of his 500 frowns on, fingers melted into your tee-shirt. Again, he says it, like you didn't hear him the first time or somethin' (which you clearly did). You're surprised he still has an ounce of patience left to waste.

"Don't, Curly."

Glass shatters.

Ma screams.

Donny yells.

You hiss, "Then where the hell else am I s'posed to go?"

He rolls a shoulder and nods his head towards the last ajar door at the end of the hall.

(You'll sleep on the floor tonight.)


	3. Daddy's Eyes

**Angela**

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_'Cause that woman's on my back again_

_I know she's got the best intention_

_When you begin to realize_

_You know, you got your daddy's eyes_

_-_The Killers, "Daddy's Eyes"

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Ma's always hated Curly the most.

Says he looks a little too much like the biological father you don't remember 'sides that one time he hit you. Peeled out of Tulsa in the family car like the devil was on his heels, a chicken with its head cut off rolling around in the dirt.

From what you've seen of the black-and-white Connolly-Shepard family photos mounted on Ma's dresser before they went back under her bed—stashed away in a box 'cuz Donny said he was sick of seeing The Fucker's Face—all you know is that, look-wise, the three of you have his dark eyes, thick hair and the small dimples in your cheeks.

When you were little, you used to sit on your parents' bed for hours with the glass picture frame clutched between stubby fingers, staring down at the five smiling faces until your retinas burned.

In the photograph, one of Dad's arms is wrapped around Ma's waist, his chin resting on her light poof of hair since he was so tall, while the other arm carefully cradles a toddler-version of you to his chest. Meanwhile, Tim and Curly are sitting at their feet in the little patch of dead grass in the front yard, dressed in Sunday's best, grinning, eyes squinted shut against the betraying sunlight.

Over the years, the only things you've gotten out of your father's absence is the ability to hold liquor and a wild temper, though Saint Tim and all His Glory sought after a way on how to restrain everything with just a glare or a few words. On the other hand, Curly's like a bull in a china shop—his impulsiveness and tendencies to act-now-think-later leaves it damn near impossible to know what shit he's gonna get himself into next.

Tonight, the AC's blown a fuse so you've popped open the bedroom window to air out the stifling heat. Even though it's only late-July, you feel like you're trapped in the desert with the sun beating its thousand rays down on your head. Suddenly, a cool breeze drifts in—the first and last one that evening—and for a few seconds you relish in the familiar shudder and goose-bump routine as it bites at your bare arms, torn from your thoughts by the slamming of the doorknob against the plaster wall.

"Ang."

You huff out an annoyed sigh and continue to focus on making the tip of your eye liner smudge a charcoal path across your waterline, pretending that Tim isn't there at all, that it's just another figment of your imagination.

His eyes find yours in the vanity mirror.

"What?" you spit, a little harsher than you should, barely able to hear him over the rush of Elvis Presley from your radio to block out the screaming downstairs. At midnight, a special showing of _Gone with the Wind_ is airing at the drive-in, and you promised Mickey O'Brien that, no, he didn't need to pick you up—you'd meet him there with Janie Mathews and Everett Thomas for your double-date. The last thing you need is to be late 'cuz of some stupid shit Tim decides to pull.

Arms crossed over his chest, Tim stalks over, fumbles with the radio's dials until Elvis' voice is finally cut off. You glare up at him then, hoping he'll go away, although he just proceeds to pluck the pencil from your fingers.

"What the—" you start to say.

He cuts you off. "This is serious, Angela." He looks down at you—in pity or anger, you can't quite tell—his cheeks hollowed out so the bones poke up from beneath, his lips barely separating from a thin line as he says, "Donny threw a bottle."

"What?"

"Fuckin' Curly was in the goddamned way and got hit. His chin's busted wide open."

Your eyes widen. "Oh, my God. What're you gonna do?"

"I'm takin' him to the E.R. as soon as the sun's up. Just stay upstairs tonight, okay?"

"But, Tim—" you hear yourself mumble, cheeks beginning to burn. Tears prickle in the back of your eyes, but you hold them in. You've learned from the best that there's no use in crying over spilt milk.

Tim sighs, pulling on a stray curl that's fallen across your forehead a little too hard. He pats your shoulder reassuringly as he turns towards the door, his job obviously done. "No 'but's, girlie, I mean it."

You swallow down the brick in your throat, try to tell him that he should let you go out, but your words keep tangling themselves on your tongue, and by the time you think you'll finally be able to say his name without gagging he's already disappeared off towards his room.

It's not the first time he's left, yet it hurts all the same.

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**Author's Note-**

So … this chapter was basically a peek into Angela's mind about her biological father. It may seem a little out there, but in case you're wondering I based it to fit into the _Inhale _timeline right after Curly goes to bed, hence what Tim tells Angela. Personally, I like writing Curly and Tim better, lol.


	4. What You Say, Johnny?

**Author's Note-**

Back to the Roman numerals and letters for Tim—this chapter is definitely rated 'M' because of his potty mouth. I don't own anything I shouldn't. Enjoy.

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**vi.**

"I don't understand, Tim."

"What?"

"I don't understand."

He raises his voice over the rush of static blaring from the Charger's stereo. You won't turn it off even though he's been bitching for the past ten minutes about how the white noise is making his ears bleed. The late-morning sun's got all of its guts spilled out over the horizon, all shades of pinks and blues and oranges, and you might've called it pretty hadn't your brain been about to ooze out of your skull and into your eyeballs.

"_What '_don't you understand', Curly?"

You're sick of him and his five-words-or-less sentences. Driving home from the E.R. on two hours of sleep, five cups of lukewarm coffee and antidepressants isn't the smartest decision you've ever made, but you'll take your chances. Fucker's got another thing comin' if he thinks you can't hear him, let alone over the thousands of other voices screaming in your head.

From your peripheral, he twitches. It's an odd gesture, the kind where he jerks his chin up while the rest of his body stays frozen, whites of his eyes blinding. If you didn't know any better, it'd look like he was an invalid on LCD. God, you'd suck your own dick just to make him _stop fucking staring _at you.

"I don't know why you hate me so much, Tim."

Ten words are enough to make you grip the steering wheel so hard your knuckles turn white and the tips of your fingers develop a bluish-purple tint. Fuck, if that wasn't a low blow. You bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling, count your teeth with the tip of your tongue, hiss out the only words to make him shut up because you don't feel like playing twenty questions at ten in the goddamned morning.

"I don't hate you, Curly."

(You make me fucking sick.)

He grins at this, like he's almost _relieved _or somethin'. Tosses his legs up on the dashboard, forearm slung over his face to block out the betraying sunlight, nearly _begging_ you to lose it. It's simple, really—all you have to do is reach over, one hand still on the wheel; wrap the other around his neck tight enough to hear him gagging for air…

Ass. You let him toy around with the simple fact that, for a few seconds out of his entire lifetime, Tim Shepard—hard-assed gang leader—can be one-percentbrotherly, ninety-nine percent dickhead.

Then, like so many times before, you let him have it:

"Get your feet the fuck off my dashboard, kid, or I'll personally remove them myself."

The deejay's voice bubbles over the static, a sudden jumble of letters creating a complicated puzzle you spend the rest of the car ride fussing about. If there's one thing you're sure of, it's that you'll kill yourself before you let him destroy you.

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vii.

It's nearing midnight when you finally see Dallas pull his sorry ass across The Dingo's crowded parking lot, the bell above the door jingling as he saunters to the back of the room over flooding with about half of the Brumley Boys and their broads.

Through the window a crowd's gathering underneath the lone streetlight by the edge of the building, which glows piss-yellow and keeps flickering on and off. Amongst the fifty or so shadows pressed against the bricks, you see the familiar outline of Paco Fernandez and his sister, Curly's ex—Ana Maria—standing a little off to the side, arguing. Someone shouts "Burnout!" as the back of a car's muffler blows up, sparks shooting up into the approaching blackness.

Lazy bastard's gotta puke-green lingering under his left eye and an infected cut the size of your index finger running along the corner of his mouth from some sorry fucker who'd pissed him off around last week at the stables, he tells you while he downs the rest of your Coca-Cola and cheeseburger.

Usually, you'd be pretty pissed off 'cuz he's just happened to finish devouring the only meal you'd had the chance to eat in three days, but right now you can't find the energy to care. Curly's been wearin' you out, with all these psychotic games making your head spin so much you can't tell night from day. Unless he gets his shit together, you might as well put a glock to your head and pull the trigger—his impulsiveness is gonna drive you into the fucking ground.

Dallas doesn't seem fazed by any of this. He yawns, presses his back into the red leather, swings his boot-clad feet, the soles covered in fresh horseshit and hay, onto the tabletop. Wipes the smear of mustard off his cheek, balls up the napkin, tosses it at you and says, "So he's bein' a fuck up. The kid's gotta head full a helium—"

"I know."

"—so leave 'im alone. Stop ridin' his ass." He raises his eyebrows so they disappear under his hairline. "Otherwise, Shep, you're fucked."

You've never known Dallas to be philosophical—shit, maybe he's the next Abe Lincoln or Socrates back from the dead, though he don't look the least bit Greek—more like a white version of Martin Luther King Jr.—but the asshole has a point.

You think about this for a minute and ask, a smirk tugging at the corners of your mouth, "Since when could you actually form whole sentences?"

Dallas grins, the comeback too easy and expected. "Since I fucked your mother in the ass."

You're about to tell him that the Indian kid who follows him around all the time like a long lost puppy—Joey or Jesse or somethin'—has been sucking you off behind the dumpster for the past month and a half when, suddenly, an earsplitting bang of a gun being fired makes you jump about five goddamn feet into the air.

(You don't know how many chairs you knocked down and people you trampled over to get outside and see what the fuck was going on. All you remember is how the sickly sweet scent of gunpowder and fresh blood swallowed up all the rest of the burning hot air; the way the red-blue-red-blue-red lights of approaching fuzz highlighted the curled-up body on the ground—a girl's—her bloody Mary screams muffled by the tumultuous thunder of footfalls and car engines revving up; the way the pebbles tore violent holes into your skin as you dropped down to your knees in the asphalt, not seeing the broad's twisted face but Angela's instead get swallowed up by the night before Dallas' hand found your forearm as he hauled you to your feet and said, "What the fuck are you doing?"

You'd shrugged, brushed it off as a freak-accident—thought you saw somethin' that wasn't there. Dallas had glared at you but said nothing else, and for the rest of the night the two of you sat in Buck Merrill's T-Bird at the edge of the quarry drinking the rest of the Jack Daniels he'd stored in the glove compartment 'till you threw up onto your shoes and the dashboard and the ass had had the nerve to shove you out of the fucking car, leaving you on the side of the road to rot.)

**

* * *

**

f.

Head swimming and heart pounding, covered from shoulders-below in sweat and vomit, a migraine you can feel all the way into the cells of your bones starts as soon as you open your eyes.

Your throat is on fire, like someone just poured a bunch of battery acid down your esophagus or you'd swallowed a lit cigarette. Either way, the sunlight's sudden burst of yellow is so intense you can't blink without frying your retinas and oh, Jesus H. Christ, it's _so fucking hot..._

Throwing a forearm over your eyes, you pathetically stumble the long trek of almost seven miles home, trying not to upchuck the empty contents of your stomach onto the dirt road, failing an epic total of three times in the process.

By the time your feet find the old wooden steps of the front porch, the sun has long melted into the moon, your tee-shirt is stuck to you like nobody's business; someone's blood has painted red, slippery trails down your knees, and for once the ringing in your ears isn't a nuisance—it mutes out plates breaking and the sound of a fist crashing through the drywall as you maneuver through empty hallways and up the thirteen steps leading to the second-story, finding none other than Curly sprawled atop your mattress when you swing open your bedroom door.

The ass has the fucking nerve to look up from the _Playboy _he's drooling over_—_your magazine, the one with the center-fold who looks a little too much like Sylvia Carmichael, the page dog-eared so much whenever you open it to get a good look it's the first thing you see—and _wave._

"Hey, Tim," he chirps, breaking you from the unconscious trance you'd been in for the last three days, "Where'd ya go last night?"

"None of your goddamn fucking business." You walk over and snatch the magazine from his hands, then whack him upside the head with it. "Get the hell outta here." He doesn't move, so you growl, "_Now_."

He rolls off the mattress and onto the ground, flicks you off, dashes out of your room before you can exhale a single breath. You drag a hand over your face and sigh into your fingers, toss the _Playboy_ onto your bedside table and miss by miles.

Muscles aching, you do the only thing you know how to—walk to the bathroom (the only other room in the house with a working lock besides Angel's), not bothering to turn the light on 'cuz you don't wanna see the leftovers of a night you don't want to remember.

Blindly, you reach for the tub's faucet and twist the wooden knob, letting your fingers turn into prunes underneath the boiling water as it slashes onto the tiles before stripping down and immersing the rest of your cracked pride into the rolls of steam.

**

* * *

**

viii.

Sunday morning you're refolding the newspaper into its perfect little square of ten inches by seven-point-thirty-five inches when your brother clambers through the front door, breathless as usual. This time, he is followed by the outline of gang member Bennie DeLuca.

"Tim," Curly says through a gasp of dry air, his cheeks red and burnt by the summer sun, "We gotta go."

"'Gotta go' where?"

"To the funeral."

The papers slip from your fingers to the floor as you get up from the couch, black ink smearing into the carpet as the heels of your boots dig into the floor. You take a step forward, cautious, balling your fists at your side, ready to release the tension that has been building beneath your bones all week onto Curly's face. Over his shoulder, Bennie shrinks back outside.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Curly?" You almost have to crane your neck up to be eye-to-eye with him, he's gotten so tall. Taller than you by a few inches, yet he ain't all there in his head. He's an act-now-think-later kinda kid, doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut and his eyes closed. Stupid fuck probably smarted off to Donny the other night—no wonder how he got his chin all cut up. Now that you think about it, a little part of you simmers, 'cuz you woulda done the same thing hadn't he left you the hell alone.

"The funeral, Tim." His words shove themselves into your ears. "Remember? Ana Maria …" his voice cracks.

"Oh, shit. Really?"

"Yeah. It's today."

The memories of Friday night at The Dingo come back to you in little flickers—Dallas sitting across from you at the table, telling you between bites of cheeseburger and sips of Coca-Cola what had happened to him last week. The crowd swarming, bodies pushing against the streetlight and the side of the building, Paco and Ana Maria in the middle of it all, arguing. And then the single gunshot, so unexpected and deafening you'd jumped up from your seat and ran outside, legs shaking and vision blurry as you collapsed to the ground next to the screaming girl. And then Dallas was dragging you across the gravel, pulling on your arm until your shoulder popped out of its socket …

All the while you'd thought it was Angela, but it had been little Ana Maria Fernandez all along. Oh, God, and fucking_ Curly …_. Some place deep inside of you feels hollow, an empty ache that spreads out from the place where your heart used to be to the tips of your fingers and toes. You close your eyes, wishing that you hadn't wasted your last cigarette earlier this morning.

When you open them, Curly's cheeks look shiny and flushed; pupils dilated and glossed over, like he'd just been crying. He's disheveled, hair sticking to the sides of his face, chest heaving up, down, up, down a little too hard and fast. You want to reach out and tell him its okay, that everything is gonna be okay, but even you know that lying to yourself will just make the situation worse than it already is.

Curly is halfway out the front door when you finally tell yourself to suck it up and say, "Hey, Curly."

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

**

* * *

**

g.

The last time you stepped into Santa Maria Del Popolo Church was for your second-grade Communion.

You'd acted up so much in Sister Teresa's class that she'd force you to read Bible verses over and over in one of the pews while the other kids goofed off by seeing who could gather the most Holy Water between their hands. Sitting there on the hard wooden plank with the Word in your lap, you'd glare up at the ceiling until Father MacDonald caught you giving an evil eye to the cross and ordered you to Confession.

If there was a God, you thought, then He didn't do a damn good job of answering your prayers. Out of your eighteen years, you've never asked for much—just the basics to get you and your family by, keep them safe and fed with clothes on their backs. The rest you'd supply by yourself, though that idea circled down the drain when the Oklahoma State Penitentiary found out you'd been arrested three times during seventh-grade-summer and counting.

For the rest of August and the first few weeks of September you'd spent crammed in an eight-by-five cell reeking of antiseptic so strong you had to resist the urge to throw up each time the guards slammed the metal bars behind you, signaling that Break was over. (Didn't help much that your cellmate was a complete wackjob and would constantly try to find new ways to annoy the fucking shit outta you, so one day, you slammed his little body up against the brick walls and watched his neck twist at a funny angle. He had to be carried away on a stretcher and you were tossed into Solitary Confinement.)

Lucky for you, the State finally got fed up with you and your uncontrollable temper, so with no other choice they threw you back onto the streets. By Thanksgiving Break of 1955, the notorious Shepard Gang was born. Hell would have to break loose before you let the rest of the world take away one of the only things you still had left.

With the rest of the Latino congregation glaring at your back as the heavy doors of the Church slam behind you—fifteen minutes late, of course—you try to maintain your cool, though the room is too small and smells like mothballs and the nicest tee-shirt you have is already coated in sweat.

You scowl, walking up the aisle towards the pew where Curly's black head is shining (thank God he's sitting in the back of the room) and do the kneel-down-on-one-knee gesture before slipping onto the seat beside him. Everything feels so formal, overreacted, and as the Priest's foreign words build up around the chorus of hushed whispers and weeping, you clap a hand down on his shoulder.

Like that time in the car, he twitches, his head snapping away from the stained-glass windows. His eyes are faraway and wide as they settle on you, the hints of a bemused expression turning down the corners of his mouth. The fresh sixty or so stitches in his chin threaten to split apart.

You give him a stiff nod, wincing slightly as the old splinters of wood dig into your ass. Because even if you're not always there to watch him fall down, you'll always be there to pick him back up.


	5. The Hurt Locker

**Disclaimer-**

S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders.

**Author's Note-**

Nerd-self had to refer to my Roman numerals online chart for this long awaited update: un-beta'd, therefore all mistakes are mine and mine to hang my head for. I'm not sure if I've ever said this [for this fic, at least] but thanks for all the lovely reviews so far—I really appreciate it with a thousand smiles to each of you.

As a side-note to the note above, the chapter title, "The Hurt Locker", is a reference to the movie but more so to the meaning: a "hurt locker" is synonymous to causing someone a world of pain, but it can also be a "hurt locker" [as in] where most junior military people of [military] emplacements and naval ships store everything in their own designated place. In this case, Tim is of the latter: he keeps a box of all the things that almost killed him underneath his bed. (Alright, I'm a little obsessed with Jeremy Renner. What can I say?)

**

* * *

****ix.**

Half of the service has gone by and you're surprised that Paco hasn't fucking lost it.

You stare down into the vast, muddy hole carved straight out of the earth, wondering how something as infinitely huge like that can hold a tiny body like Ana Maria's. The Priest hasn't bothered to notice that you and Curly are the only white guys here besides a few stragglers from the lower ranks in the Shepard gang, hanging about ten yards back from the cluster around the casket, so he continues to ramble on in a secret code you have yet to decipher.

You recognize a few words here and there, like _muerte_ and _Ana Maria_ _era una buena chica_, but the rest is just white noise, rushed words tossed between sobs and choked-out coughs from Curly's throat.

It's weird, you think, how, one night, everything is fine just fine, and then, by morning—not even twenty-four hours since a gun was fired and someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's _girlfriend_—is pronounced dead by a heart monitor. Gone, pushing up fucking daisies.

Your brother's voice tears you from your thoughts:

"Tim." His voice is barely above a hoarse whisper; you have to strain the rest of what little hearing you have left to understand him. "I wanna go home."

You fumble around your jeans pockets for the half-pack of Camels you always keep on you and your Zippo lighter. You take one out of the box and light up, shoving the cigarette between his lips before he can tell you no.

"Are you sure?"

Curly nods, twisting his body away to exhale smoke. He turns back around to look at you, face ashen and eyes distant, focusing on the last chunk of white cloud yet to be dissolved into the oncoming storm.

"Yeah," he murmurs, "I think so."

You steal the cigarette now dangling from his fingertips and take a drag, holding the smoke in your lungs until the cells peel off and begin to dust their way down your ribcage.

"Let's get the fuck outta here, then." You motion with an arm towards the parking lot adjacent to the cemetery and head towards it, waiting for him to fall into step besides you before what is left of the cigarette gets crushed beneath the heel of your boot.

A little part of you feels uneasy, but you brush it off as the chemicals in your head fucking with your sanity again. Curly's pink cheeks burn scarlet when he catches you staring, and he opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, like a fish out of water with its gills slashed.

No words come out for a long while until the two of you are in the car and the radio's blasting something awful loud as your tires swing out onto Main Street. You roll up to a red light and fiddle with the dials on the radio, curse at the car in front of you for cutting you off, all the while trying to turn the redneck twang shit off.

Above you, the black clouds tear apart at the seams, thunder and lightning muted by the pissing sheets of rain hitting the roof of the Charger. For a second you're left wondering what you would do if this happened to Angela and you weren't there to stop it.

**

* * *

**

h.

An hour later you dig out your keys from your pocket and unlock the front door, Curly hot on your heels. He kicks off his shoes and rushes past you in lightning speed, hastily disappearing up the stairs. A door slams; the pipes above your head begin to pulse with water.

You wander into the kitchen, stomach growling, only to find Angela dumping the rest of her cereal down the sink drain. She scoffs at you while she rinses out her bowl, dries the spoon, puts them back in their respectable places of drawer and cabinet.

"How was it?" she asks, lingering on the threshold to the hallway.

"Alright." You wave Angela off and walk over to the bundle of cloth that is your mother. Peck her on the cheek, a small smile tugging your thin lips apart.

"Hey, Ma," you say, unsure of anything else to mutter—you haven't seen her in days. You kick out a chair and straddle it, arms resting on the wood. "How are you feeling?" Mary Ellen Connolly is a strong woman, but she doesn't know black from white if gray slapped her across the face.

She's wrapped up in a ratty, old yellow bathrobe and three blankets, shivering despite the goddamned awful heat, bony hands wrapped tight around the chipped handle of an empty coffee mug, hair sticking up all over the place. Her face is reflected in the tabletop: sickly-green colored skin and eyes glazed over, mind trapped between light and dark, consciousness and delirium. Some disease that all the possible schooling in the world couldn't teach you to pronounce.

Two yellow pills in the morning before breakfast, then two yellow pills and one blue pill at night before bed—that's what the doctors said. If consumed with alcohol and/or overdosing can be fatal.

"Did you take your pills this morning?" You speak slowly, not continuing your little checklist in the back of your organized mind until she nods. "How about breakfast, did you eat?" Another nod. "What did you have?" She picks up her mug, raises it up, sets it down again.

You breathe out your nose in relief—your mother's health is one thing you can't fuck up beyond repair. You dig your chin into the crevasse of your elbow, angry at her because she won't talk about the new bruise shadowing the left side of her face, even though you're more pissed off at the fact that you can't tell her this is fucking sick, that you're being eaten alive.

Once, too long of a time ago, you could have.

So you sit there and stare at the paint peeling off the walls, listen to the thumpthumpthump of the pipes drowning out the rain that pounds against the last remaining shingles of the roof with an iron fist.

She's looking at you in pity, all pursed lips and knit-together brows, and you wonder if this is what she thought her son would ever turn out to be: a gang leader instead of a Pussy College graduate, smarting his way to Chicago. If this is what her life would ever turn out to be: living from paycheck to paycheck, thirty-pill bottle to an eight-ounce bottle of whiskey.

Ma coughs, swallows down the rest of what's been climbing up her throat. "Timothy." She addresses you by your full name–said once that the nickname Dad gave you, Tim, was a "fucking disgrace to my brother"–the clipped tone of her frail voice ending the conversation you never got the chance to start.

"Help me to bed."

You know the routine all too well.

"Sure, Ma," you say, standing up and reaching out a hand. Her fingers wrap around your wrist and you hastily tug her out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the back bedroom, never letting go. As if, somehow, you might be able to save yourself from the inevitable, all the while Angela's judgmental eyes burning holes into your back.

**

* * *

**

x.

You can feel people staring; it's like heat that rises from the pavement during summer, like a poker in the small of your back. You don't have to hear a whisper, either, to know that it's about you.

When you were younger, you used to stand in front of the bathroom mirror after taking a shower and watch the steam drip down to the countertop, trying to get a better look at what everyone else saw. You wanted to know what made their heads turn, what made you so incredibly different. For awhile, you just saw yourself.

You.

Then, one day, when you looked into the mirror, into your own eyes, you hated yourself. Maybe almost as much all of them did, but you'll never know. The only thing that you remember about that morning was how hard you'd thrown your fist forwards and, moments later, glass had spilled all over the floor and sliced through your palms.

That was when you decided to gather up all the shit your twelve-year-old self could carry. With great anxiety, you squeezed your ribs against your lungs and plucked a single sliver of bloody glass from your open palm so you wouldn't scream at the rippling pain that followed.

For the rest of the week, you'd searched the house from top to bottom, the attic to the bedroom in the basement, gathering up little knickknacks no one would ever notice missing: your third-grade report card from Santa Maria Del Popolo, the last one you ever received from Sister Teresa before getting kicked out and being fed back into the Tulsa public school system. A copy of the black-and-white photograph of your parents on their wedding day, all eye-squinting smiles and promises made to last forever, only to be broken by alcohol and popped pills. One of Angela's dolls, the princess' face cracked straight down the middle in a jagged, edgy line. A shirt you'd let Curly borrow once or twice before you noticed the large hole towards the bottom of the hem and added it to your collection. And, finally, last but not least, the cheap .45 millimeter pistol you'd found shoved into one of Ma's infamous teapots crowding the makeshift table in the darkest corners of the basement where the rats had dug a hole into the foundation—unloaded, the four gleaming bullets nestled inside a hand-knit bag.

You'd shoved all of this—your most prized possessions—into this little ten-by-eight inch space of cardboard. Closed the lid, shoved it beneath your bed to sit with the growing piles of dust and _Playboy _magazines, so far back that whenever Curly tried to wiggle his way under the mattress to get a peek he still couldn't reach.

You let your fingertips graze the edge of the single rose petal you'd pocketed on your way to the Charger after the funeral service, bright and alive and pulsing red, something that Ana Maria would never be again, and the Mass card for another bittersweet second before you let go.

You turn your face away towards the window above the bed, where small slips of twilight are slipping through the cracks in the twisted blinds, until you can't feel the unwelcome burning of tears slip from in the corners of your eyes and down your cheeks; until you can't hear the front door slam behind Curly and his choked sobs; until you can't breathe.

It was almost easy, all those years ago, when nothing mattered. Because then, you didn't have to pretend that people did.

**

* * *

**

i.

You step outside onto the front porch, gingerly shutting the screen door behind you. Curly's leaning up against the railing, fingers dug into the chipped wood, breathing out smoke ring after smoke ring into the cold air.

He swears quietly, flicks the cigarette butt off into the darkness, a sliver of his face lit up by the orange flame for a few seconds as he fumbles to light up another Camel. You wonder if he knows you there, and if he knows that one day, you'll leave him, too. His hair is still dripping wet—the waft of shampoo, too many shots of stolen whiskey from the bottle you keep hidden in the back of your closet, nicotine and tears that is him. (You want to tell him that he should go inside, put a jacket on 'cuz if he doesn't he'll get sick, but this time, you hold yourself back.)

"Do you ever think," Curly says, his voice low, and you can't tell if he's talking to himself or to you, "that there's something on the other side of all this? Like . . . what if God's waiting for us to realize that he's kinda been there the whole time."

"Helping?"

"Yeah. Maybe . . ." he swallows, "this was supposed to happen all along, or somethin'."

You cross the three steps separating you from him and ruffle his hair like you used to when you were little. You exhale a breath you didn't know you were holding in, the words tumbling out before you can bite down on your tongue and reel them back in. "You're gonna be okay, kid."

He turns around to look at you, eyes glazed over and nose red. "You really think so, Tim?"

You nod, insides squirming. He'd give his own life for your praise, your pity, the rest of your sanity. So you just stand there, two broken halves of a fucked up whole, underneath the purple sky and the sea of white stars and God.

When he murmurs "Thanks, Tim", stubs out his cigarette on the railing and heads back inside, it is the first time you've been speechless in a long while. You bend down, pick up the fallen cigarette butt, study the teeth marks imbedded into the cheap parchment.

(Later, you'll shove it away, like you always do to everything and everyone else, into the little ten-by-eight inch cardboard box underneath your bed where it can stay there, still and silent and untouched. It's your way of dealing with the rest of the world, an easy way out of confronting what you can no longer control; you vow to yourself that nothing is ever gonna fucking change that. No matter what.)


	6. Bright Lights, Big City

**j.**

It's late.

Night has slowly pressed itself against the corners of your skull, expanding and compressing until the blackness has suffocated every last attempt on trying to remember how to breathe. Underneath the dim glow of the porch light, moths are swimming around each other in the dry air, looking for some sort of solace in the last goddamn place that would offer any. It's almost disgustingly pathetic how you're still standing out here, stuck in one moment while the rest of the world rushes on, undisturbed, your absence unnoticed just as if you'd dropped off the face of the earth. Almost.

Maybe you have, and maybe you haven't—the line's so blurred between reality and fantasy that, sometimes, you can't tell whether you're sleeping or wide awake—and that should be a good thing, for however good these things are in this kind of life, but lately you've been finding it harder and harder to choke down your own words than to throw them back up and that's so fucking scary you want to scream.

The pressure to survive is building to a climax. You open your right hand and look down at the cigarette butt you'd picked up after Curly had tossed it aside earlier, finding little comfort in knowing that you still own a part of yourself that never really existed after all.

You'd told him that he'd be okay and he'd questioned you, as if he knew that you both didn't believe what you'd just said—y_ou really think so, Tim?_—and you hadn't told him yes and you hadn't told him no because, for once, it was a question you didn't know the answer to. But he'd played along, thanked you anyway, and that's what the worst part of all this is: knowing that the truth, which has been buried so deep for all these years, is finally excavated from underneath all of the lies you'd told and will tell again, will be so overwhelming you'd have killed yourself before it could kill you.

Your stomach muscles are clenching and you want to throw up, although there is nothing left inside of you to suffice this last cry for help. You think you need to lie down. You're shaking so much—from the tips of your fingers to the tips of your toes—that you have to lean over and grip onto the porch railing so you won't fall down the front steps and snap yourself in half.

The stars are spinning as they drip from the sky, yellow acid on black lava, and the stale air that is so light but feels so heavy on your body is dragging you down, down, down, until you're swallowed underground and the worms and the moths are eating you alive and oh, God, you're too young be feeling so dead.

* * *

**xi.**

That day the sky was blue, the color of your mother's eyes, the deepest point in the Mediterranean Sea where fish died so far below that their carcasses didn't float to the surface or the shoreline.

There were cotton-candy fluffs of white clouds, and you thought that if you reached out far enough, you could claw a part of it out and keep it all to yourself.

A yellow, burning sun that reminded you of egg yolks and how, when you were still young with Heaven at your fingertips and Hell on your heels, your mother would stand at the stove on Sunday mornings and make the best scrambled eggs in the world, the perfect amount of grease and cheese you'd be drooling long after your plate was scraped clean.

A red mark the size of a handprint, branded into a cheek half the width of the palm used to slap it, the same color as the bow tied crookedly into her hair and the burning splotches on the face of a boy standing a little off to the side, out of view and out of mind, as if he, too, could disappear, only to realize that no one had noticed he'd been standing there at all.

That's the difference between running from your past and running towards it. Eyes closed, you could see only the blackness, reminding you of this one memory, the deepest of your secrets; eyes open, however, there was only the world that didn't know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.

* * *

**xii.**

The rest of the summer of 1961 passes by in nothing but a blur, July and August seamlessly blending into one another so fast you can't tell when one day ends and another begins. Everything is hot, a record-breaking, blistering kind of heat that swelters the whole city from sunrise until the sun sets—and even then, lying bare-chested on your back in your bedroom with the window cracked wide open and a cold beer in your hand, you're still sweating your balls off.

Intense summers mean intense winters and you're not in the mood for another sucker punch to the face. Just keeping Curly and Angela in-check is enough to make you wish you didn't have to, because if it's not one then it's always the other, and God knows you've never been good at multi-tasking.

You're only nineteen and you feel like an old Cheshire cat, one who was given too many lives and wasted more than half of them chasing mice and sneaking breadcrumbs off the kitchen floor.

Curly's birthday's coming up soon, the first of September, and you have yet to pull some money out of your ass and buy him something worthwhile. Ever since the little Fernandez's funeral, he's been more off than usual and you don't know whether to give him more space or give him none at all. A piece inside of him is lost and will be for a long time; you can see it in his eyes, that same pleading look you wore all those summers ago when you had no one to reach out to and no one to reach in.

It was fucking hard, at first, to open your eyes each morning and act as the person you never thought you would become. But slowly, day by day, against everyone's better judgment and your own you grew stronger, wilder; and everything else—the grief, the helplessness, the ache in your stomach that made you gag at night—was pushed away, ignored so much so that when it was finally exposed, you had no recollection of those things being a part of you at all.

You were raised to believe that everything happened for a reason, good or bad, although sometimes you can't help but think about what would happen if you'd never asked Curly to go get those ice cubes. If you'd instead held back on the sidelines like he'd done and let someone else fill in the space you couldn't, so vast and vague you could wrap yourself around it and there'd still be gaps in between.

Now, staring at a water-stain on the ceiling, you take a swig of your beer and let the fizz burn the tips of your teeth. The screen door slams from downstairs, a distant sound in all this rare quiet—the only other noise is coming from the radio you'd stolen out of Angel's room and it's playing nothing but static—and footsteps thud up the thirteen steps and then down the hallway towards your room.

Curly appears in the doorway, face flushed in that I-just-ran-over-here-to-tell-you-something kind of way. You sit up and curse, a couple drops of beer splashing your chest. He's caught you off-guard, and the excitement in the room nearly drops to a freezing point.

"Tim." He exhales your name, breathless. "Guess what."

"What?"

You frown. Playing the game_ Guess what_ with Curly can mean a million and one things under the sun—_Angel's knocked up; I'm dropping out of school; Winston slashed your tires again!—_that you've long-given up on saying anything in response, just adding in the "what" part and comments at random intervals.

"There's a race goin' down at The Ribbon later. Gonna be huge." He moves his hands around in a circle, like he'll be able to contain all this information in one space. "Randle wants you to race with him—"

"—Steve?"

Curly nods. "Yeah. The middle Curtis dropped out, or somethin'."

You're surprised. You haven't talked to Steve Randle in awhile, except the occasional _Hey_ and _How's it going_. You're friends with him by underground law and would be none otherwise—he'd never be able to run with your gang and is a pain in the fucking ass like Dallas, maybe even worse. But still: it's a Friday night, and the truth is, you don't really have anything else better to do.

Curly doesn't have to ask you if you want to go—you're already on your feet, pulling a shirt over your head and slipping into your shoes. The air that's blowing in through the window is the perfect temperature for late August, cool enough where you don't have to bring a jacket.

You shiver, not because of the goose bumps appearing on your arms or the fact that your kidneys are twisting in knots and you need a cigarette to calm your nerves down, but because Curly has smiled for the first time in months and you'd smiled back.

* * *

**k.**

Drag racing is dangerous, fun, and most of all its fucking stupid.

You show up at The Ribbon about ten minutes before the race is supposed to start. The excitement in the air is so palpable you can taste it in the back of your mouth. It's crowded, more suffocating than the last time you were here, and your throat aches for a beer to make everything a little less clear around the edges.

For some reason, you're feeling disappointed: It's the same crowd with the same girls, a sea of red lipstick and lacy bras poking out from their shirts—two sizes too small—with their legs dangling a little too far apart. Propped up on car hoods, they look like pin-up dolls, and you briefly wonder why Angela spends so much time in the bathroom painting herself into a whore if she's just going to be treated like shit. Half of the guys here are shitfaced already and it isn't even half-past ten, some stumbling around while others have decided to light up cigarettes and pretend that they're fucking Al Capone, scouting out girls that are high enough to take home for the night.

This isn't the first time you've noticed people staring at you and you frown, but Curly tenses up beside you anyways. He mutters that he's going to go find Davie Adams and Bennie DeLuca to sit with and cuts across the lot before you can tell him not to come home the next morning smelling like whatever shit he rolled himself in.

You see a sudden flash of black hair from the corner of your eye and notice that Steve Randle is flagging you over from the track, thank God. When you reach him and Two-Bit Mathew's borrowed Pontiac a few seconds later, Steve nods at you and hands you your first beer of the night.

"Thanks for doing this, Tim," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Sodapop dropped out at the last minute."

Oh, right—that's the middle Curtis, the one who looks like a fucking girl.

You cough and take a sip of your beer. It's lukewarm and it doesn't taste that good, but it's better than just standing here like an asshole and trying to force a conversation that you don't really want to have. A group of people are clustered in a circle around a car parked a couple feet down from you, their voices rising and falling.

"So," you say, pointing the rim of your cup towards them, "are those unlucky bastards our competition?"

"Yeah." Steve smirks and starts blabbering to you about how he fixed something that wasn't working right earlier in the week but he's quickly drowned out by a long whistle. The race is about to start.

"Ready?" He asks from beside you. It isn't a question. You dump the rest of the beer onto the dirt and crush the paper cup under the heel of your boot. He's opened the driver's side door and has already slid in and twisted the key into the ignition, the engine roaring, and goddamn it if that isn't the sweetest sound you've ever had.

From across the lot, you search the bleachers until you lock eyes with Curly. He's sitting at the top of the stands, and underneath all of the bright lights he looks wary, suffocated into the crowd. The beer he's holding in his hand is shaking a little too much and the corners around his eyes are too tight and you think if he smiled any wider his cheekbones would break.

"Yeah," you say, "I am." And then, like always, you turn your head and look away.


End file.
